Sabbe Satta Bhavantu Sukhitatta
Tapirs included
I often wish that human beings visit more frequently the Buddha’s
discourse on loving-kindness, the Karaniya Metta Sutta.
“May all beings be joyful and secure; may they be happy within
themselves. Whatever living beings there be, without exception, movable
or immovable, long or huge, medium or small, subtle or gross, visible or
invisible, dwelling far or near; born or coming to birth, may all beings
be happy within themselves.”
The Buddha, after this initial statement or blessing, goes on to
elaborate the active element that can reasonably produce such happiness
and security, i.e. a discussion on Metta, moving from intellectual
consideration to the experiential.
In all this, it is the Siyalu Satvayo or ‘all beings’ comprehensive
that I find particularly appealing because it goes beyond all
home-centric world views. Moreover, it makes for a more benign
engagement with the world in its entirety and advocates an individual
and collective mode of being and engaging that ought to have been
adopted several decades ago. It is a way of being which we will probably
have to embrace, not as choice but necessity thanks to the violence
we’ve done this earth and each other in pursuing selfish ends.
I was taken to these timeless texts that open minds to the eternal
verities by a news item tucked away in a website,
www.srilankaguardian.org. Apparently the last tapir in the Dehiwala Zoo
had died. Well, all beings, Tapirs included, and indeed all things
(thoughts, political parties, ideologies, relationships included) are
subject to the Dharma of the Jathi, Jara, Marana (birth, decay, death).
I wasn’t acquainted with this tapir and under normal circumstances I
would not have lost any sleep over such a death.
It is reported that the Chief Veterinary Officer of the Zoo had
pronounced that there were nearly one and a half kilograms of polythene
in the tapir’s belly and that this was what had caused its death.
I remembered my first visit to the Dehiwala Zoo. It was a school
trip. I was in the second grade. All I remember is the ‘Elephant Show’
and a white cockatoo. I’ve been there several times since and each visit
depresses me, more so than the previous one. I think it began when I saw
‘Planet of the Apes’, where the apes were shocked to learn that monkeys
were held captive in zoos by humans. Perhaps it was after watching a
Star Trek episode where two humans were captured as specimens for a
menagerie. There is of course an entertainment element in a Zoo;
children get to see ‘live’ animals they would otherwise see only in
books (or on the web), they learn about habitats, eating patterns and so
on. At what cost, though?
Forget the cause of this death for a moment. Are we such a bored
species that we have to literally lift an animal (well, one of several
thousands of course) from the jungles of South America, put the fellow
in a cage, far away from familiarity and meaningfully being, so that we
can feast our eyes on the ‘exoticity’? Have we stopped to ask ourselves
at any point in the 3-4 hour walk around the Dehiwala Zoo how we would
have felt if the chimpanzees, giraffes, tapirs, rhinoceros or any other
species separated us from friends and family and put us in a cage? Where
is the ‘all beings’ part of our Metta, Muditha, Karuna and Upekkha? Are
the gaze of the Sathara Brahma Viharana limited only towards our
relations with our kind alone?
Let us get back to the cause of death. Polythene. Isn’t it because
we’ve been so self-absorbed as a species, so homo-centric in the way we
view the world, the way we engage with it, and so arrogant and
self-congratulatory that we have not noticed that not only are we
suffocating other creatures, we are asphyxiating ourselves? Aren’t these
the very reasons that nothing concrete will result from the
deliberations of the UN General Assembly in New York with respect to
healing a world us humans have wounded over and over again? Zoos only
exhibit the human being’s insatiable capacity to be cruel and a
scandalous fascination with things like capture and control. We are a
sick species aren’t we, ladies and gentlemen?
Well, I’ve decided. I have out-of-bounded myself from the Dehiwala
Zoo and all other such facilities. And no more meat or fish for me; no
Karawala or Umbalakada either.
Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who can be contacted at
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